H. G. Adler

Adler, H. G. (Hans Günther Adler)häns günˈtər ädˈlər, 1910–88, author and Holocaust studies pioneer, b. Prague to a German Jewish family. He and his family were deported (1941–44) to a workcamp, to the Theresienstadt camp, and to Auschwitz. He survived, but his wife, parents, and most of his family were killed. In 1947 he settled in London and devoted himself to describing and analysing his experiences, producing 26 books. His best-known novel, Ein Reise (1962, tr. The Journey, 2008), depicts a family's journey through the world of the Holocaust and ends with a lone survivor. Adler's collective stream-of-consciousness prose captures the collision of the quotidian and the surreal and the workings of minds in madness. Of his four other modernist novels, only the autobiographical Panorama (1968, tr. 2011), has also been translated into English. He also wrote poetry and such scholarly works as Die Juden in Deutschland (1960, tr. The Jews in Germany: From the Enlightenment to National Socialism, 1969), a study of Theresienstadt, and other books about the Holocaust.